Coulomb Stress Change of the 2012 Indian Ocean Doublet Earthquake

Abstract

The 2012 Sumatra (Mw 8.6) earthquake, which falls into the largest and rarest group of the great intraplate earthquakes, continues to awe many brilliant minds. An enormous aftershock (Mw 8.2) was felt two hours after the Indian Ocean earthquake along the triple intersection of the Indian, Australian, and Sunda plates in the northwest. Over the past 20 years, there have been numerous earthquakes in the Sumatran subduction zone, including the 2004 earthquake (Mw 9.2) of Sumatra-Andaman, the 2005 earthquake (Mw 8.6) of Nias-Simeulue, the 2007 earthquake (Mw 8.4) of Bengkulu, the 2010 earthquake (Mw 7.8) of Mentawai tsunami, and a large number of other minor to moderate-sized events. It often takes a few seconds to a few minutes for the stress brought on by an earthquake to dissipate. This massive discharge disrupts the lithosphere and asthenosphere, which causes more earthquakes to occur nearby. A comprehensive comprehension of stress variations along a fault and its neighboring faults is essential for effectiv ly predicting and mitigating seismic risks. Drawing inspiration from the earthquake finite fault model pioneered by Guangfu Shao, Xiangyu Li, and Chen Ji from UCSB, we have formulated Coulomb stress models tailored to the Sumatran subduction zone and the Sumatran fault. It was discovered that the primary shock’s related coulomb stress change exceeded the stress-triggering threshold. The aftershock struck a place where there was a lot of stress from the mainshock. Therefore, the Coulomb failure stress change brought on by the mainshock is likely what caused the Sumatra aftershock to occur. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024.